Our Judges

Kathleen Jamie is a poet and essayist. Her work concerns nature, travel and culture. Her poetry collections include The Overhaul, which won the 2012 Costa Poetry Prize, and The Tree House, which won the Forward prize. Her non-fiction essays are collected in the three highly regarded books Findings, Sightlines, and Surfacing, all regarded as important contributions to the ‘new nature writing’. The Bonniest Companie appeared in 2015, and won the Saltire Scottish Book of the Year Award. In 2024 she published Cairn, ‘a view from the strange here-and-now’, and The KeelieHawk, a collection of poems in Scots. Kathleen’s interests are in archaeology, nature and environment, travel and art. From 2021-24 Kathleen served as Scotland’s ‘Makar’, or National Poet.

Daljit Nagra is Professor of Creative Writing at Brunel University of London, and Chair of the Royal Society of Literature 2021 – 2025. He is on the Council of Society of Authors, a PBS New Generation Poet, presenter of the weekly Poetry Extra on Radio 4 Extra. Daljit has five poetry collections, all with Faber & Faber, which have won the Forward Prize for Best Individual Poem and Best First Book, the South Bank Show Decibel Award and the Cholmondeley Award, and been shortlisted for the Costa Prize and twice for the TS Eliot Prize. His latest collection indiom is a Poetry Book Society Choice. He has an MBE for Services to Literature.

Caroline Lucas was the UK’s first Green Party Member of Parliament between 2010 and 2024, and before that served for 10 years in the European Parliament. She has served as both Leader and Co-Leader of the Green Party of England and Wales. She is a writer, campaigner and keynote speaker, with a particular interest in the role of education and the arts in mobilising action on the climate and nature emergencies. She has won numerous awards for her work: in 2020 she topped the list of the BBC Radio Woman’s Hour One Planet Power List of influential activists, educators and campaigners, and in 2024 the UK’s largest sustainable business awards scheme presented her with its Lifetime Achievement Award. She is Co-President of the European Movement, and a Trustee of the Towner Art Gallery in Eastbourne. Her latest book, a Sunday Times bestseller, is Another England: How to Reclaim our National Story.